New Skool

(click photo for link to the Budapest Grafitti gallery)

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Today was my first day of work at Business Hungary, the magazine of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hungary, also known as “AmCham”.  I started off making phone calls to AmCham member businesses for a survey concerning the adoption of the euro, at present scheduled to be adopted in 2010 but in all likelihood to be pushed back to 2020 if not later.  My first few calls weren’t so successful, with one woman asking me such questions as “Who are you?  the BBC?” or “What, you want us to invest?” and finally: “No no, the euro won’t be adopted.  What was your name again?”  But after a few more I got some responses (mostly in English) and at least nobody hung up on me.  As I was just starting to think about getting some lunch, my boss exclaimed suddenly that we were supposed to cover an AmCham luncheon and there was no photographer.  As luck would have it, I’d brought my camera with me today, and they decided to send me.  About 8 minutes later, I was walking into the Marriot after cabbing it across town, hoping they wouldn’t crucify me for being late.  Talk about into the lion’s den.  The talk was given by a consulting firm about the business strategies of the top ten most desirable companies.  Some big wig politicos were in attendance, although to me they’re still just people.  I didn’t have a real flash or long lens, so the possibilities were a bit limited, but I did what I could and my editor said they could use two.  As I was leaving the office I was told that AmCham had e-mailed to say that next time “the photographer should be dressed more appropriately.”  Maybe it was the earrings.  Not too bad for a first day.

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There are several new galleries available for viewing in the photo galleries section of the site.  I have also updated the links section with a few more tasty time-wasters.  And last but not least, you can now view my first two Flash projects that I’ve completed for my distance learning course.  And yes, I know the Oh! My Surrogate Children logo is out of date, I’m working on a new one.

The past week has been uneventful.  Last weekend E and I went to Visegrad, a town north west of Budapest, with some of her friends for the dramatic view of the Danube below and to check out a castle.  We also went to Slovakia to check out a castle there too.  Slovakia is great because it’s really close and you can get cheap food and most importantly, beer.  We also wanted to stock up on some soy pate that we really like.  Wow, I guess I have been busy.

The Danube River, from the Visegrad hills.

(click picture for a larger version in a new window) 

I had my first day of work at the Greenhouse, an international kindergarten in the wealthy hills of Buda.  I play with 16 Japanese (yes, Japanese) children in the morning and then teach them English in separate groups in the afternoons.  They are generally well-behaved and super cute.  Expect pictures sometime soon.  It’s been a fun way to keep up my infantile Japanese (that I learned from my high school students last year) and make a little booze-money as well.  I have also been enlisted by the head of the program to design the kindergarten’s web site.  It will be my first professional project!

In other job-related news I have contacted several people about private English lessons and also I have an interview for an internship with Business Hungary, an English-language magazine based here in Budapest.  If I get it I’ll (hopefully) be doing arts and culture writing and photography.  Stay tuned.

On Friday October 7, my grandmother died of pneumonia in her bed at the Willows elder care and nursing facility in Westborough, MA.  Her husband, Frederick, was at her side and she passed painlessly and unafraid.  This is the first death of a family member during my lifetime.  She was 85.

My memories of this grandmother are perhaps a reflection of her character, that is to say, surrounded by the things of her, as opposed to just her as a person.  I remember the house she and Fred shared on what my mother always told me was “an acre” of land, an estimate that henceforth served as reference to my sense of scale when land area in terms of square acreage was discussed.  It was on a hill and was the kind of house you only enter through the back door, although on occasion we would go in through the garage or a side door that led to a disused living room with a piano in it.  There were clocks in that room, and outdated pictures of the grandchildren and others that I didn’t recognize.  The house was two floors, but my sisters and I as children seldom went to the second floor as it seemed a rather bland setup of grandparent sleeping quarters and bathroom.  The heart of the home was in the kitchen, dining, and living rooms that formed the nucleus of the first floor.  From the kitchen under the desk with the big black telephone on it grandma would get us ginger ale that we drank with ice.  For some reason it was always the slightest bit bitter.  The kitchen was brown and dim, but at Thanksgivings the most amazing meals would emerge from an invisible oven, things like giant turkeys and lamb and squash and baked potatoes.  And then after dinner the real treat- apple, pecan and pumpkin pies- the most amazing I’ve ever had and never to be replicated.

The living room had board games and comfy chairs and I always liked to help my grandfather build a fire during the times we’d visit in November and December, watching as he moved logs around with bare hands and thinking him the bravest man in the world in that moment.  The house and the living room especially had a familiar grandparent smell to it that actually stuck with me after they’d eventually sold the house, as I inherited one of their couches.  Grandma would sit on that couch with my mother and a sister and talk while she knitted something or another.  Although she did not have a strong or distinctive personality, she had such a lively voice and a laugh that always sounded authentic.  Even when she scolded it was as if it were a joke; you could see the smile in her eyes.  They had a black lab back then named Hawkeye that never seemed to give them any trouble, as if he knew that happiness is rare and to be cherished.  There were all these strange things in that living room that fascinated me as a child, such as the patterns in the rug and several Thai dolls that had been given to the family as gifts.  My grandmother’s father had through some strange coincidence been the obstetrician for the delivery of the future King of Thailand; later my grandparents would travel there as official guests for the 75th year of his majesty’s “Golden Rule”.  I believe when she saw the baby my grandmother was quoted as saying “He doesn’t look like a king!  Why doesn’t he have a crown?”

Out in the rolling grassy yard there was a quite large pine tree that had Christmas lights permanently strung around it.  Over the years they planted a garden near the tree with all sorts of lovely flowers and plants.  During summers when they were getting older I would occasionally go out and help my grandfather mow the lawn.  He had a riding mower that was my first experience with a manual transmission and I remember lugging the bags of grass out into the wooded area to spread them out over the ground.  There were stone walls built here and there around the property, and there were also the stone foundations of a house long ago conquered by nature.  Grandma and Grandpa would sit out in the porch and sip tea while I mowed around in big lumpy circles.  To get to the porch one had to cross through a room of light blue carpet and antique furniture that also remained largely unused.  There was a strip of clear plastic pathway going through that room that it almost seemed a sin to step off of.

The house was comforting, spotless and warm.  It wasn’t until years later that I would ever see my grandmother as anything but the archetype for that house.  She had curly grayish hair and wore school teacher dresses, with an apron if she was cooking.  In winter she had a bonnet but never a hat and a full-length black puffy coat.  When I was 13 I traveled with her and Fred to Russia to visit my sister, who was studying at the University of Moscow.  I remember riding a streetcar with Fred and walking down cold winter streets with grandma in that black coat.  They loved to travel.

Over the later years of her life, Eleanor developed Alzheimer’s disease and began to drift away mentally.  At first it was just recent events that escaped permanent settling in her brain, and she remained quite lively.  At Christmas and the other times that I saw her, more infrequently now that I was in college, she would remark quite happily about attending the opera the previous week or traveling to Philadelphia.  Eventually she began to weaken physically as well, and the burden of her care became so that they decided to move to the Willows.  After a couple of years even her long-term memories began to fade, and it was unclear whether she still recognized many of the people in her life, although she still had occasional moments of clarity and wit.  I think this point was the most troubling for her and for the rest of the family because she seemed to be confused and concerned about her situation, yet unable to really comprehend what was happening.  About a year ago, to our relief, she seemed to lose this anxiety as well, and those flares of understanding also tapered off.  She was in a wheelchair full-time and I could tell was just skin and bones as I helped lift her in and out of the car when I was around long enough to go out to dinner with them.  The last time I saw her, I had just dropped them off from my last dinner with her in September, and Fred was pushing her through the automatic sliding doors at the Willows.  For some reason, as I looked across the car roof back at them, I knew I would never see her again.

In some ways, many in the family feel a certain bit of relief that the ordeal is over with.  I think we can feel grateful that she lived as long as she did and that her passing was painless and probably beyond her ability to comprehend.  While we could not say goodbye in a way that would be meaningful to her, we had the time to accept and acknowledge that death is a way of life.  Our full attention now turns to the remaining three G’s, who are all thankfully alert and active.  Fred still drives and seems to be holding up well.  He has said he is grateful that he got his wish to outlive his wife so that he would be able to take care of her.  Of all things, this was the one that brought a tear to my eye.  Talk about love and dedication.  May she rest in peace.

Life is just a moment in time.

Sad news today that more terrorist bombings have occurred in Bali.  The previous attacks, in 2002, were devastating in terms of lives lost and damage to the local tourist-based economy.  Three years later, things were just getting back to normal, and now this.  The island holds a special place in my heart and it’s a surprise and an outrage that anyone would want to disrupt such a seemingly idyllic place.  The suspected attackers are once again Islamic militants, supposedly pursuing their goal of creating a unified Indonesian state under Islamic doctrine.  The population of Bali, comprised of some 80% Hindu origin, is nearly a different country in ethnicity and culture, but has historically been tolerant of all religious belief and is not antagonistic towards the government that I know of.  The livelihood of the island’s residents depends in large part on tourism, and in my experience it was generally devoid of such controversial and seedy tourist staples such as casinos, strip clubs or pornography.  It was basically surfers, beach bunnies and families enjoying the sun, food and shopping.  So what’s so bad that you need to go and kill and maim a bunch of people, most of whom end up being Indonesians anyway?  I suspect that there are many things the fundamentalists resent or hate, such as religious diversity, western cultural ideas and morality, etc. but I also believe that the comparatively robust economy of Bali inspired no insignificant amount of envy in other poverty stricken parts of the country and a childish will to destroy the source of others’ happiness has resulted.

Hopefully, the Indonesian government will take strong measures to curb the terrorist elements in it’s population.  As a generally peaceful Islamic nation (East Timor not withstanding), I think Indonesia will be the place to watch for developing methodologies to deal with religious militancy that seems to be the new scourge across the globe.